This technique is for use on long car trips, when you just know that sooner or later, the children will start squabbling and fighting (or as we say in our household, fobbling and squighting) in the back seat, driving the adult occupant(s) of the car crazy.

You can, if you apply this technique, stop the fobbling and squighting in an instant.

Before you start the car trip, buy a packet of chocolate frogs.

As you all get into the car, children in the back seat, adults in the front, the adult(s) should open the packet of chocolate frogs. The packet of chocolate frogs should be left in full view of the children.

Then, start driving.

Sooner or later, the bickering, the shoving, the kerfuffle, the noise, the complaints from the back seat will get to be too much for the grown-ups to bear.

At that stage, the adult(s) should reach for a chocolate frog. They should wind the window down, and throw the frog out.

At the end of the journey, the children may eat any frogs that are left.

This is a remarkably effective technique. Generally it results in an appalled silence from the back seat, and peace and quiet for at least 10 minutes.

There is a variant technique. Instead of throwing the frog out, you can eat it yourself. However, this variation may well end in tears.

And in reality, we have only tried this once. Alas, we couldn’t keep our faces straight, so the impact on the back seat behaviour was minimal. But the thought was fun….

I don’t think I could bring myself to throw the chocolate away (especially if they’re chocolate frogs from Haighs). Not that we have a child (or a car for that matter) but maybe I will start practicing for such time as ‘baby-Hassall’ needs discipline (of course baby-Hassall will be sitting in the backseat by itself so maybe will not be relevant…)

only thing I might be worried about is that I know chocolate is toxic to dogs and may well be toxic to other animals too…
so I’d eat them XD not that I plan on having kids but if I ever have to do this with relatives/friends kinds it sounds great.

Feminist blogging

Mary Astell

If all men are born free, how is it that all Women are born slaves? as they must be if the being subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary Will of Men, be the perfect Condition of Slavery? and if the Essence of Freedom consists, as our Masters say it does, in having a standing Rule to live by?

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